


Conversations with Dead People

by celeste9



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Guilt, Hallucinations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 16:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4399103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke walks away from Camp Jaha but she can't escape the things she's done. (post 2x16)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversations with Dead People

**Author's Note:**

> Written for smallfandomfest for the prompt 'Clarke, continues to hallucinate Finn (post 2x16)'. Fills the hallucinations square on my hc_bingo card. Yes, I stole the title from Buffy.

After walking away from Camp Jaha, Clarke slept in the open air beneath the stars. When she awoke, she was no longer alone.

It wasn’t her mother or her friends or the Grounders. It wasn’t Bellamy.

It was Finn.

Clarke rolled from her side onto her back, away from Finn’s big sad eyes. She didn’t need to see a disapproving hallucination of him to know how much Finn would have hated the choices she had made in Mount Weather.

She was supposed to be over this. Finn was supposed to be leaving her alone. She had done so much since then, seen so much, and now... Well, having the shade of the dead boyfriend she had killed to spare him a more gruesome death following her around was a bit much.

Steadfastly refusing to set eyes on him, Clarke cleaned up her spare camp and moved on. The problem was, Finn came with her. She didn’t have to look at him to know. She could feel it.

He followed her all that day, sat by her at night, and when she woke again, he was still there.

As if Clarke needed Finn’s disappointment to add to her own guilt. What was she supposed to do? Shout at him again? Plead with him to leave? Assuming that it was the trigger, somehow get over the guilt that had led her to leave Camp Jaha only two days ago? It was impossible.

There was nothing to do but hope he would leave.

“You can ignore me all you want, but I’m not going to go away.”

Clarke stopped dead in her tracks. She turned, facing Finn (it wasn’t Finn, it wasn’t, it wasn’t, Finn was _dead_ ).

He looked just the same as Clarke remembered, dark eyes, shaggy hair, dirty clothes. Finn. “You can’t be here.”

“Why, because I’m dead?”

“Oh, God,” Clarke said, sweeping a hand through her hair. “I’ve gone insane. It’s finally happened.”

Finn laughed and the sound of it almost made Clarke want to weep. “You’re not crazy. Just... Well, you looked like you could use some company.”

“Oh, okay, that makes sense. I seemed lonely so my brain conjured up my dead boyfriend to keep me company. But I’m not crazy.”

“Maybe not _completely_ crazy.”

“Just a little bit. Yeah, that makes me feel better.” Clarke crossed her arms in front of her chest, eyes scanning over Finn. “You didn’t talk to me last time, so I’m at least a bit crazier than I was before.”

“Like I said. Thought you could use someone to talk to.”

Clarke considered the situation. Honestly, she’d been through worse. She could deal with manifestations of schizophrenia. At least she was aware none of it was real.

When she started walking again, Finn kept pace with her at her side. “So, what’s been happening?”

If you approached this logically (or as logically as one could when you took hallucinations into account), Finn already knew everything that had gone on since his death. He knew everything Clarke knew, because he was a product of her own mind.

Still. Clarke could admit, if only to herself, that she wanted to talk to him. The chance to have another conversation with Finn was a thing she had often longed for in her dreams. He might not exactly be Finn, but he looked like Finn, and he sounded like Finn, and that was enough.

“I kissed a girl.” That was better than saying, ‘I kissed Lexa, the woman who ordered your death,’ wasn’t it?

“Oh, so that’s how you got over me. No guy could ever measure up so you moved on to another sex entirely.”

Clarke couldn’t help but laugh, looking over and seeing Finn’s smile. The way he’d used to smile, before. Maybe that was why, because Clarke was hallucinating him the way she wanted to remember him. Sweet, wonderful Finn, before the world broke him.

“What happened?” Finn asked.

_She betrayed me. She abandoned me, saving her own people at the expense of mine._ “Didn’t work out.”

“I’m sorry.” Finn sounded genuine, but then, he would. He was only a manifestation of Clarke’s subconscious, and no one could be sorrier about what had happened than Clarke herself.

“That isn’t why you’re here, though,” Finn continued, prompting gently. “Why you aren’t with your mother. Our friends.”

“No. It isn’t.” Clarke concentrated on the sounds their feet were making as they walked, fallen foliage crunching underfoot, because that way she couldn’t focus on all the things she was running away from.

“Tell me what happened.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do. And I think you need to say it.”

Clarke glanced at him, and then it all came spilling out in spite of herself. The alliance with the Grounders, the experiments at Mount Weather, Tondc, their plan. Lexa choosing the opportunity to save her people rather than taking the risk to try to save Clarke’s, too. How alone Clarke had felt, how desperate, how scared. And then she told him what they’d done, her and Bellamy and Monty. What she’d done.

Maybe it was a good thing that Finn hadn’t been there. He hadn’t had to see the person Clarke had become.

“Are you happy now?” she finished. “Is that what you wanted to hear? All about the monster I’ve become?”

Finn only held Clarke’s gaze. “I know you, Clarke. You have a good heart. Everything you do is to protect the people you care about. You would never have done what you did unless you felt you had no other choice.”

“You can’t rationalize this! How could what I did ever be the right thing? I killed those people. I’m a _murderer._ How many people are dead because of me?”

“And how many are alive because of you?”

Clarke looked at Finn’s earnest face and it all made sense. Maybe she was going crazy but at least she understood why. “You’re telling me what I want to hear. You’re telling me all the things I desperately want to believe, because otherwise...” Otherwise there would be nothing to stop her from feeling like the monster she was already afraid she was.

“I’m worried about you.”

“You don’t even exist. Not anymore.”

Finn stepped closer, reaching out to lay his hand on Clarke’s cheek. “Don’t I feel real?”

She shuddered at the touch, breath hitching and eyes falling closed. Maybe her imagination was better than she thought. “Doesn’t matter. You aren’t.” Probably it just meant she was _really_ crazy.

Clarke tore herself away from Finn’s touch, turning her back on him and marching ahead. Always ahead, never back.

“What does Bellamy think?” Always persistent, that was Finn.

“Why do you care?”

“Because you care.”

Oh. Right. “We did it together.”

“So where is he, then?”

“He’s in Camp Jaha, taking care of our people.”

“Okay, let me get this straight. You and Bellamy made yourselves the leaders of everyone-- mostly you, lately, let’s be honest-- and destroyed an entire group of people to rescue them. Together. Then you, what? Abandoned him to go off and find yourself in the woods, leaving him to deal with the responsibility of your actions?” Finn sounded incredulous but he didn’t know, he couldn’t know. He couldn’t know what it was like.

That wasn’t what happened. Clarke didn’t - She wasn’t - She _needed_ this, couldn’t he see that? It wasn’t about Bellamy. It was about her. Couldn’t she do something for herself, just _once_? “Who are you to judge me?”

“Just the guy you stabbed.”

“I did that for you!” Clarke was crying; she could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks. “I had to; they were going to torture you! I did it for you, Finn, can’t you see that?” She had saved him in the only way she could. It had been the hardest thing Clarke had ever done but if she had to make that choice again, she would do it all the same.

“I know that, Clarke,” Finn said, so soft. “But do you?”

“What?”

“Why are you here?”

“Because I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t face them, not after what I’d done. I couldn’t see their faces every day, knowing... knowing what it took to bring them home. Knowing that they knew it, too.”

“No, Clarke. Why are you here?”

“I told you!”

But Finn only repeated, “Why are you here?”

Frustrated, Clarke shouted, “Because I can’t live with it!”

She fell silent, shocked at herself, but she knew it was true. She couldn’t bear it, inside. She didn’t know how to live with what she had done. The guilt was eating away at her and soon she was afraid there wouldn’t be any part of her left. She would just be this cold, empty shell, this shell that looked like Clarke Griffin.

“Look at me,” Finn said, and in spite of herself, Clarke obliged.

“They will forgive you,” he said. “Hell, half of them never felt like they needed to. You saved them, and you made the hard choices so they wouldn’t have to. The problem? The problem is that it doesn’t matter what anyone else says if you won’t forgive yourself. The only person’s forgiveness you need is your own.”

“How can I?” Clarke said, feeling like she was pleading, begging. “I _killed_ you, Finn, and I killed Grounders, and I killed those people in Tondc, and I killed everyone in Mount Weather. I killed... oh, God. I killed children, Finn, I killed... I killed them. I killed them all.”

“You were at war, and now you know how it feels to be the victor.”

Clarke sank down onto the ground, holding her head in her hands. She could feel the weight of all those lives pressing down on her and she thought she might suffocate beneath it. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I tried to be the good guy. I tried to do what was right. You made me choose and I had to choose us. I had to choose us._

She could feel the pressure of Finn’s body against hers and wished with all her heart that it was more than a figment of her imagination.

“I miss you,” she whispered.

“I know,” Finn said. “But you never really needed me. You have yourself, and you were always stronger than all of us.”

“I’m not sure that’s true.”

“I am.” Finn leaned in and kissed her temple, and Clarke could almost pretend it was real. “Now get up. Your people need you.”

When she looked up, Finn was gone. His absence ached worse than ever, even if Clarke knew he had never actually been there to begin with.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes. She could stay here in the dirt, feeling sorry for herself, but what good would that do? It wouldn’t bring anyone back and it wouldn’t make up for her crimes. As far as Clarke could see, there was only one thing to do.

Clarke stood up, and she put one foot in front of the other.

**_End_ **


End file.
